Monthly Archives: March 2017

A friend sent me second-hand notes of a recent talk by Dr. Arthur Laffer at the University of San Diego and requested my comments. I sent him the following.

One quick anecdote. When I headed a not-for-profit consulting office in the late-1970s in Washington, DC, a politically connected contact of mine asked if there were anyone in Washington that I particularly wanted to meet. I told him Arthur Burns, then Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. He couldn’t get Burns, but he sent Art Laffer to my office, and we chatted for about an hour. That was a few years after he famously sketched the Laffer Curve on the back of a napkin.

Regarding his forecast of a coming economic boom, while anything is possible, such a boom is facing formidable headwinds. Let me comment on the four pillars of Laffer’s argument, as spelled out in the notes.

Laffer is a staunch conservative, and he may be taking a political shot in saying that the Obama economy is the lowest bar in history. True, the past eight years have marked the slowest recovery from recession since WWII, but the economy has been growing over that entire period, albeit slowly. The economy today is far healthier than in 2008 when unemployment was very severe, the housing market was in shambles, and most major banks were insolvent, surviving only by the grace of a government rescue. Obama inherited an economy in serious recession, and while growth has been slow, it has been growth. Throughout U.S. history, there haven’t been many growth periods that have lasted longer, so for this to be the beginning of a boom period, it would have to break historic precedent in terms of longevity.

Laffer’s contention that all powers are in line (President, House, Senate, Supreme Court, lower courts, etc.) is questionable. Despite having legislative majorities, the Republican administration is encountering resistance within its own party. There’s been less than unanimous enthusiasm for the first iterations of the attempted Affordable Care Act revision. With economists of various stripes warning of potential negative economic consequences resulting from tighter immigration policies, unanimity in that area appears unlikely. There is already healthy debate about the wisdom of a border adjustment tax. A worst-case consequence could be violent retaliation, resulting in the kind of trade wars that prolonged and exacerbated the Great Depression of the 1930s. The prospect of significant fiscal stimulus has already aroused concern among right-leaning Republicans, many of whom have cut their political teeth as debt and deficit hawks. Many will not likely fall in line as good soldiers in the fight for fiscal stimulus. That the courts are not completely in line seems evident from the initial ruling against the administration’s first efforts at immigration restriction. The President’s characterization of a “so called judge” is unlikely to win friends among the judiciary.

Laffer’s third point sounds like his first, that the runway ahead is a long one because we’re starting from a rock bottom economy. See my earlier comments.

Tax cuts, to the extent that they are passed, will likely provide a boost to corporate earnings. And Laffer has long been a believer that such an event will turbocharge the economy. I’ve not spent any significant amount of time studying the effect of tax cuts through history, but I have certainly heard arguments that the hoped-for results have fallen far short of expectations. It’s incontrovertible, however, that government actions in the aggregate – tax changes, governmental spending and central bank activity – have produced inexorably rising levels of debt. In this country, and in most of the world, debt burdens have risen well beyond the levels that have preceded major economic slowdowns over many centuries. In This Time Is Different, Reinhart and Rogoff spell out in copious detail the deleterious economic consequences that predictably follow explosive debt growth. Invariably, populations experiencing excessive debt hear detailed explanations about why “this time is different,” and why such debt is not a serious threat. Reinhart and Rogoff maintain that history demonstrates clearly how such thinking is typically penalized severely.

In the summary of Laffer’s talk that you sent, he apparently argues that California will be a prominent non-beneficiary in this coming economic boom. If California is failing and failing quickly–“circling the drain” as Laffer put it–this will prove to be a very significant headwind facing the national success story. It’s hard to imagine a national boom with the country’s largest economic component (13.3%) stagnating.

As I said earlier, anything is possible, but Laffer’s contention flies in the face of probability on several counts. Since I was not at the talk and am reacting only to the notes taken, you have to evaluate the accuracy of the note-taker. There could, of course, be nuances not reflected in his notes.